[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 127 (Monday, September 8, 2014)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5366-S5367]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




    PROPOSING AN AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES 
     RELATING TO CONTRIBUTIONS AND EXPENDITURES INTENDED TO AFFECT 
                ELECTIONS--MOTION TO PROCEED--Continued

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.
  Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be able to 
speak as in morning business for 15 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  (The remarks of Mr. Inhofe pertaining to the introduction of S.J. 
Res. 43 are printed in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced 
Bills and Joint Resolutions.'')


                                  NDAA

  Mr. INHOFE. There is another issue I wish to talk about, and I have 
talked to our leader, Chairman Levin, on the Armed Services Committee. 
There are several members of the Armed Services Committee, including 
the chair, on the floor.
  I think we wanted a vote on what happened last year. Last year we did 
not pass an NDAA--keep in mind we passed an NDAA every year for 52 
years. Perhaps, in my narrow view, I think it is the most significant 
bill we address every year.
  Now we have this year's NDAA that we passed on May 22. It passed our 
committee 25 to 1. It had the overwhelming support of Democrats and 
Republicans to go ahead and have an NDAA bill. Chairman Levin and I 
have come to the floor and begged our colleagues to send down 
amendments if they want. We have several amendments now, a couple 
hundred amendments. We are looking those over. We are going to try to 
see what can go into a managers' amendment, and maybe we can come up 
with something. I am hoping we can do it before the election, to come 
up with a bill that will consider the amendments. If we were able to 
say to the Democrats and Republicans in this vote that we would 
restrict it to ``X'' number of amendments, 3, 5, 6 amendments on each 
side, then I believe our leader would allow this to come to the floor 
so we could have an NDAA vote.
  I have a number; 140 amendments have already been filed. The staff 
has been working over the August recess to put together a managers' 
package that is going to consider varieties of all these 140 
amendments, but we need more. What I don't want to happen is in the 
last minute everyone comes up and says: Wait a minute. I have 
amendments and I want to have them included. Now is the time to do it.
  We have thousands of men and women serving today in harm's way, 
risking their lives for us, for our Nation, and they are dealing with 
the most complex and volatile global security environments I have ever 
seen in my life. We rely on them to do their job to keep our Nation 
safe and they should rely on us to do the same.
  Let's remember what happened last year. Last year we didn't do it and 
we came up to the year-end, and it wasn't until then we decided we were 
not going to be able to do it in the legitimate way that we have been 
doing for 52 years. And so I happened to be the ranking member of the 
minority, and of course we have Chairman Levin and we had the two on 
the House side. The big four got together in a room, took all the 
amendments that had been considered, weeded through them, satisfied 
most of the people, and in 3 hours we designed a bill, brought it out 
to the floor and passed it on the 26th of December. Now we have gone 
beyond that. We have gone to December 31.
  We have kids out there risking their lives without hazard pay, 
without reenlistment bonuses. It costs some $15 million to train a 
fighter in the air to the standards of an F-22, and the reenlistment 
bonus would be about $200,000. So the economics are there. Assuming we 
had gone beyond that point, it would have been an absolute disaster.
  So I am pleading with all of our Members on the Republican side and 
on the Democratic side to do what is necessary to bring their 
amendments down to the floor.
  The President recently submitted an OCO request for $59 billion to 
fund operations in Afghanistan and around the world. The request 
includes a new $4 billion counterterrorism partnership fund and $1 
billion for the European reassurance funds. Many questions remain about 
these funds. I have questions about it. I haven't talked to one member 
of our Senate Armed Services Committee who knows the details of this 
request.
  We are the ones who should be doing this. These are measures we can 
include in the NDAA, and I am going to ask and plead with our fellow 
Members on the Democratic and Republican side to get your amendments in 
and let's go ahead and let us take a number of amendments on each side 
so we can have the ability to do it the way it should be done.

[[Page S5367]]

  The only alternative is to do what we did last year, and that doesn't 
include anyone except four people in the House and Senate.
  With that, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

                          ____________________